


Call It What You Want

by Prix



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Affection, Age Difference, Age-Related Angst, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism (mentioned), Androids Can Feel Pleasure, Androids Can Feel Touch in Some Capacity, Bittersweet, Blindness (mentioned), Bonding, Forced prostitution (mentioned), M/M, Mortality, Slice of Life, The Police are No Longer in Detroit, Touching, Uncertainty, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, but unclear how much, unemployment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: Hank doesn't know what Connor can feel, but he feels something.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Call It What You Want

**Author's Note:**

> You ever get an idea that's stuck in your head that is just like a mental image that you have to figure out how to turn into a fic and until you do you can't write anything else? This is one of those. 
> 
> I have other ideas for this fandom, but this is the touchstone image that I needed to get out on digital paper. 
> 
> This fulfills the **"Monday"** prompt on my [fffc](https://fffc.dreamwidth.org/) 100 Prompt Table. 
> 
> I actually had this idea before quarantine, but the concerns about the humans still left in Detroit post-evacuation have definitely been influenced by the anxiety related to supply chain disruptions and stuff like that during this terrible year.

It is a Monday morning, for all the difference that it makes. Since the order to evacuate Detroit came through and most of the  _ human _ people left, Hank hasn’t even tried to go back to work. 

Since the first couple of days, he hasn’t even seen a cop, himself excluded. Even law enforcement and medical personnel have, for the most part, abandoned the city. There are a few hangers-on, but for the most part they are people who couldn’t afford to leave or the elderly who would not hear of leaving Detroit, no matter what came its way. 

It’s quiet now. 

Snow still blankets the ground, dampening any sound that comes. Most of his neighbors’ houses stand empty. Sumo plods across the front yard, leaving large paw prints in the fresh layer of snow. He sniffs and roots around for a bit before settling on the right spot to do his business. Hank shoves his hands deeper into his coat pockets and politely looks away. 

His breath forms a cloud of vapor in front of his face. It still smells faintly of toothpaste, adding to the tingling sensation of the cold as he sucks more air in. He hears the rattle of Sumo’s collar and the crunching of his feet approaching. He steps back toward the front door and opens it up. 

“There ya go,” he says to Sumo as he lets him back into the warmth of the house. “Hey, hey,” he chides when Sumo is ready to run through the house, invigorated, tracking melting snow and mud everywhere. “You get back here,” he says. 

Sumo bows to him, indicating that he thinks this is all a game.    


“Sumo. Here,” Hank says. He points in front of himself as he clutches a clean but old towel in his other hand, fetched from a coat hook. 

The dog finally obeys and slowly skulks back over to stand in front of him. 

When Sumo stands in position, Hank kneels down and works at drying and cleaning off his feet. He also tries his best to knock the bits of half-melted snow off his fur up his legs and along his belly. After he has done the best he can, he finally backs off and makes a gruff sound, nodding. 

“Okay,” he adds at the end as Sumo has already bolted off to go into the living room. 

He hears that the television is on, faintly. 

Hank kicks his own boots on a rug and another old towel by the door. Then he takes off his boots and tries his best to tiptoe over the stray clumps of icy slush that have made it onto the floor. He hisses as he can’t avoid all of it and one sock suddenly starts absorbing water that seems all too happy to melt against his body heat. 

He isn’t terribly happy with this state of affairs when he makes his way out of the foyer and toward the sound of the television. 

Connor is sitting on the couch, his gaze fixed on the curved television screen. He isn’t watching the news. That’s the first thing Hank notices as he hangs back, observing for a moment. 

For the first few days, Connor was either out trying to help with the immediate business of the androids requisitioning what they needed from the abandoned CyberLife facility and the city itself. A lot of them had taken up residence in abandoned apartments and homes, but others had chosen not to take on the forms of everyday human life when they had different wants and needs. 

Hank had offered Connor a place to stay without thinking twice. These days, Hank feels more like he is staying in Connor’s city, Connor’s home, even if it is technically  _ his _ house. But he doesn’t mind it. 

Sooner or later, the grocery stores are going to run out of frozen and pantry goods, and the fresh produce has already run out. That’s going to be something they have to address for the remaining humans in Detroit. But under Markus’s leadership, Hank isn’t too worried. It’s not like he is missing much when his diet was mostly frozen meals to begin with. In warmer weather, there are the gardens in the city, too. 

Hank can’t imagine it yet, but in a way he has. Maybe he’ll become a gardener. 

Whatever he is, the Detroit Police as he had known them are in the past. And he can’t really say that he misses it. 

He feels lost, but he felt lost every day for years and years. 

He shakes himself back into the present and pads across the room to the back of the sofa. 

Connor looks up when he is in close enough proximity for his presence to seem relevant. 

“Good morning, Hank,” he says. He smiles. It looks weird from the angle of looking down from behind him. 

“‘Mornin’,” Hank says, a little uncomfortable with the formality of answering in kind. He nods toward the television to indicate that he hadn’t meant to interrupt. “What’s on?” he asked. 

“I have been watching a movie,” Connor explains. “You are correct that it is different to watch them instead of researching them.” 

“Told ya,” Hank replies with a smirk. He feels a little relieved when Connor looks back at the screen. Hank still hasn’t taken real interest in it. 

Now that he is in the room with him, on this quiet Monday morning when he has no job, no plans, and no schedule for the foreseeable future, the idea of doing anything but looking after Connor and Sumo seems distant and unimportant. Only, Connor doesn’t really need  _ looking after _ . 

That sensation in his chest troubles him. The idea that he wants Connor to need him. At first, he had wondered if it was some kind of prejudice he hadn’t yet managed to shake. Only, it is warmer than that and in a much more familiar shape. It’s more that he doesn’t want to make it out. 

In the mirror, Hank sees a man who has wasted so much time. He isn’t  _ young _ anymore, and Connor is the picture of youth. And he’ll never change, never grow old, unless he goes and modifies himself at will. It isn’t the same. And it will be long after he’s dead before Connor’s mechanical parts will wear out on their own. Even then, he’ll be able to be repaired, piece by piece, until he is once again whole and brand new. 

Hank knows that, at best, he’s got less than half a century left. 

And even that is banking on a lot of grace from his abused internal organs. 

It shouldn’t bother him. For years, he had been trying to take the slow and easy path to suicide, drinking himself drop by drop closer to the grave. 

Connor has nagged him about it since he moved in, more and more insistently, and as Hank had become aware of the effect that the supply chain completely  _ stopping _ in and out of Detroit had, he had started to wean himself off without even realizing. It’s a Monday morning, and Hank is basically sober. 

If he can call this sober. 

He reaches out and puts his hand on Connor’s shoulder. 

Connor moves to look up at him again, but Hank answers before he can. 

“It’s nothing,” he says. 

Connor relaxes when he is given permission. Hank can feel it. He  _ feels _ human, like he has muscles and flesh under his hand. He is warm, though he isn’t quite as warm as another human would be. 

Hank doesn’t know why he wonders what, exactly, Connor feels as his hand cups his shoulder and then slides up along the old, worn cotton fabric, along what feels like a tendon. It’s an eerie feeling to know that what it feels like, it isn’t. He wonders if Connor cares one way or the other. 

He has asked him questions from time to time. He knows that androids don’t feel pain, as such, but he has seen the way they can recoil in fear when they are hurt. He has seen them angry and confused. He knows that they  _ feel  _ something. But it is almost impossible to know what, exactly, Connor feels. 

It isn’t even that he can’t come up with the right question to get the answer he wants, the answer he dreads and fears. It’s that it’s impossible to ask a blind man if he likes a certain color. All the adjectives in the world wouldn’t do it justice or satisfy either person that they had come to an agreement about what it meant. 

Hank doesn’t even know why his hand starts to move, fingers gently curling around and thumb finding a path to stroke up and down the path from Connor’s neck to his shoulder and back again. He feels Connor breathe and notices that he is obliging in the way he doesn’t look up and stare at him while his hand seeks out some kind of satisfaction to the empty warmth in the center of his chest and stomach. 

Hank wonders if he should feel sick about it. He’s just an old man who’s spent too much time alone. But finally, Connor rolls his shoulder and tilts his head a little. 

Drawn away from thoughts he would really rather not have, Hank tries the same movement he had just made with his hand and massages his thumb in a deeper circle into the skin that he knows is made of miracle science-fiction liquid but which feels solid and strong all the same. 

Then he stops, his hand lingering but going still. He is about to pull it away completely and to go take a shower or something when Connor squirms a bit as if he misses the loss of movement. 

“It feels nice,” he announces, apparently innocent of any further agenda than that. 

Hank swallows against a lump in his throat and is very still. 

“What do you mean by that?” he asks. 

“I mean it,” Connor says as if he knows that no amount of words will ever fully communicate what only touch can. So Hank grips Connor’s shoulder and continues with the practiced movement of his hand, the bad of his thumb eventually going from cotton to skin. He wants more of it, but he doesn’t know if Connor would even know what that means, beyond something his people had been forced to do for the sake of some slimy businessman’s clean profit. Hank closes his eyes and braces both his hands more gently against Connor’s shoulders, willing himself to let whatever he can have be enough.


End file.
